Here’s How Much Money People Need To Earn To Feel Successful

Maybe it's getting promoted or accomplishing a difficult task. Perhaps it's a sense of fulfillment in your personal life or satisfaction at work.

We all associate success with different things, and, according to a new CareerBuilder study, a six-figure salary isn't always one of them.

The survey, conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder, asked 3,372 workers and 2,188 hiring and human resource managers what salary they needed to earn to feel successful.

A majority (55%) said less than $70,000 a year, which is fairly realistic when considering the average American salary is $46,000.

CareerBuilder broke the results down and found that 63% of women and 47% of men who participated in the survey said they could earn $69,999 a year or less and still consider themselves to be successful.

"On average, workers’ notions of what they need to earn to feel successful either aligned with what they currently make or were just one step above what they currently make," says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. "This means career success isn’t necessarily associated with a particular dollar amount. It's relative to where we are at in our careers and how we progress along our career paths."

Only 4% of all respondents (5% of men and 2% of women) said it would take a $200,000-plus annual paycheck to make them feel successful.

"Making ends meet is clearly important, but people who go to work every day out of intrinsic motivation — for the love of the job — are far less likely to associate success with salary," Haefner says. "Feelings of success originate in a variety of ways: meeting personal goals, receiving positive feedback from customers or management, or simply the belief that what you do makes a difference."

Here's a breakdown of what employees need to earn in order to consider themselves successful: